In my opinion the strategy of MS is to further put in a plug of MS Office. Its scope is not limited to just Windows OS but BYOD devices such as iPad. For MS Office definitely it's a good thing. It should not harm Windows, either because the MS Office on iPad serves mobile office purpose. We still need normal laptop PC with Windows and full MS Office on it.

In my opinion the strategy of MS is to further put in a plug of MS Office. Its scope is not limited to just Windows OS but BYOD devices such as iPad. For MS Office definitely it's a good thing. It should not harm Windows, either because the MS Office on iPad serves mobile office purpose. We still need normal laptop PC with Windows and full MS Office on it.

I'm not convinced compatibility = minimizing relevance of the OS. Microsoft software still works most seamlessly in its natural environment.

Besides, I am convinced that the consumer market ultimately drives the enterprise market (what the execs buy for themselves and their families at home ultimately lead those same execs to buy those same devices for the business) -- and gaming still lies in the realm of Windows.

That's a valid point, but I am not sure it's quite the minimization that you think. The casual user may be able to use Word outside of Windows, but for now the professional wordsmiths, number crunchers and presenters will have to have the main products.

This is an important observation. Office on iPad means more symbolically for Microsoft than in practice. Sure, Office on iPad options are great for fine-tuning and will make the Office experience more fluid and democratic via cloud services like Microsoft OneNote and/or Dropbox. That's a good thing.

But on a deeper level, Microsoft is absolutely minimizing the relevance of the Windows OS, the consequences of which we'll see play out in the next few years. But it had to be done, and big kudos to Nadella for bursting Ballmer's reality distortion field bubble.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.